A boy from North Bali just born from a father whom was kept in a cage for 8 years by his family due to his mental illness. With the institute helps he manage to live normally in community, got marriage and now has 2 children. An innovative model of integrated community mental health was created in order to create a ground community-based prevention, treatment and rehabilitation system.
“Mental disorders’ treatment in Indonesia uses a hospital-based institution approach. As a result of this functional failure of this mental health model, many untreated mentally ill individuals are abandoned, permanently restrained, chained, or placed in cages by their families (pasung)”, said Professor Luh Ketut Suryani after received a happy news from North Bali regarding the new born baby. The actual number of such cases is still unknown; however, the Indonesian government officially estimates this number to be around 18,000 individuals, while unofficial evidence puts it over 40,000 cases nationwide.
